Trump claims big jump in VA trust scores, but data shows modest gains

President Donald Trump this week claimed that trust scores for patients in the Veterans Affairs health care system have risen dramatically since he returned to office in January, but department data doesn’t back up his claim.

During an Oval Office event with military families on Monday, Trump praised the work of VA Secretary Doug Collins thus far, asserting that the department now has a “93% approval rating” under his leadership.

“We had a great first term and it was pretty close to that then,” he said. “And then [President Joe Biden’s administration] took over and it went down into the 30s and 20s. It went down at one point to 28% or 29%, which is terrible … But now you’ve blown everyone away, Doug.”

The broader VA Trust survey, conducted quarterly since early 2016, shows a similar story. At the start of Trump’s first term in the White House, only about 55% of veterans said they trusted the department to “fulfill our country’s commitment to veterans.” By the time Trump left office at the end of 2020, the number was up to nearly 79%.

VA data shows the trust score remained between 78% and 81% during Biden’s entire term in office, far above the under 30% that Trump claimed on Monday. The latest department update shows that 79.2% of veterans expressed confidence in the department at the start of the summer, down about 1% from a year earlier.

Department researchers also began an annual outpatient survey in fiscal 2017, during Trump’s first term in office, to gauge satisfaction rates.

That year, 85% of patients said they were happy with how agency staff handled their outpatient care appointments and procedures. At the end of Trump’s first term in office, it had risen to 89.1%. At the end of last fiscal year — the latest data available — the number was up to 92%.

Trump claimed the improvement in veterans perception of VA came because the previous administration “gave away choice and accountability … and we put them back.”

That claim has been at the root of continued political sparring between administration officials and Democratic critics of Trump’s veterans policies. Republicans in recent weeks have pushed through a series of reforms designed to make it easier for veterans to access health care options outside the VA system, but the impact of those moves still remains to be seen.

During Monday’s event, Collins noted that department officials have reduced the disability claims backlog by about 40% since January. That number has also been in steady decline for the last two years, since the backlog spiked to more than 400,000 cases after the passage of the PACT Act.